The barbarian

I don’t know whether David Starkey is a racist. I doubt very much whether he knows either, because the word has ceased to have any empirical meaning, now being little more than a Humpty-Dumpty term of socio-political abuse (see also “politically correct”). But – probably inadvertently – he has raised another issue, about black culture. Or rather cultures, as his fellow panellist Dreda Say Mitchell argued, rightly pointing out that black British people should not be defined as a group  in terms of second-hand gangsta archetypes.

But if this is the case, that there is no single, homogeneous black culture, surely the same applies to the majority (dominant, mainstream, white, British, Judeo-Christian, whatever you want to call it) culture. Starkey probably wouldn’t wish to be defined by the antics depicted on The Only Way Is Essex. Indeed, I suspect he wouldn’t wish to be defined by comparison with Simon Schama or Niall Ferguson either. And if it’s impossible to define culture at the micro-level of self-publicising TV historians, (What would the collective noun be? A pontification?) then how the hell can you do it on a broader scale? What is white culture, English or British or western culture? It’s everything, and as such is nothing.

While the neds and scallies and oiks and rudies of all colours were smashing windows and burning buildings, it was Dr Starkey who – again by accident – laid waste to culture as we know it.

(Five Chinese Crackers weighs in, with just the right combination of passion and forensics; and you’ve probably already read Charlie Brooker on bling, but anyway. And then Rhodri Marsden on how the above video clip fits into everything. You may be none the wiser, but don’t say you aren’t better informed. PS: And also something about the contribution of urban [non-]planning, by Owen Hatherley. Do I spoil you or what? That said, I might write about something unriotous next time.)

The sins of the sons

It was a pleasure to burn...

Apparently bookshops have for the most part evaded the attention of the looters; and a Waterstones employee was heard quipping that this is a pity, because “if they steal some books they might learn something.” Which did prompt me to throw together a quick reading list that might throw a little light on the situation, and it was looking something like this:

• Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle


• Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation


• Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces


• Abbie Hoffmann, Steal This Book...

...when I noticed the delightful Bidisha pointing out that a TV show made for Amnesty International was made by a team of 11 white men and... er... that’s it. And my boring liberal conscience kicked in, and I wondered whether it really matters, but if it does, are there any books by women and/or people who aren’t Caucasian that might be added to my list?

(Title half-inched from the opening of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Image ramraided from the delectable Photoshoplooter. And while we’re vaguely on the subject, if you think reading matter is sacrosanct, look at this.)

PS: As if someone heard me, Bookmarks has come up with a list. It’s more inclusive than mine, but not that much.

Corporate raiders

From the Telegraph, of all places. (Click to enlarge.)

The revolution will not be televised if they nick all the televisions

(Those who have been following me on Twitter over the past few hours may find some of these observations a little familiar. My only defence is that, in true postmodern spirit, I’m just looting myself.)

A year and a bit ago, there was a period of civil disturbance in Bangkok. I wrote something about it at the time. It’s not helpful – nor is it my place – to divide the participants into goodies and baddies, but I think it’s fair to say that most of the protesters originally came to the city with honestly held grievances. In their view, the democratic process had failed them, after elected governments aligned to Thaksin Shinawatra were forced out of office, first by the army, then by the courts. Non-violent protest degenerated into something nastier, 90 or more people were killed, and much damage was inflicted on the city. But, as far as I’m aware, nobody stole any flat-screen TVs.

Some of the more strident opponents of the protesters argued that if this is how ordinary Thais behaved when they had the merest sniff of democracy, it might be better for the country if it were sealed off from these new-fangled notions for a few years. To his credit, Prime Minister Abhisit rejected such a move, in due course called an election, and was soundly defeated by Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s sister/proxy. So the protesters got pretty much what they wanted but – crucially – they got it through the ballot box, not through brute force.

Recent events in London and beyond seem to have followed an initial trajectory that’s superficially similar to that of the Bangkok protests, with a peaceful demonstration against a perceived injustice getting out of control. But what happened next was at once less serious (nobody, so far as we know at the moment, is dead) and more reprehensible, as participants quickly ditched all pretence to a political motive and began to loot and burn for its own sake. Condemnation was quickly and rightly forthcoming from all quarters, even if some of the proposed responses (water cannons, troops on the street, martial law, shoot on sight) suggested that some people don’t follow recent events – those in Bangkok, for example – as closely as they might. And some other rumours banging around Twitter, such as the meme that the animals had been released from London Zoo, just prove that some people read too many John Irving books.

The looters in London and Birmingham and Liverpool and elsewhere don’t have the excuse that they were the victims of an anti-democratic fiddle; moreover, they’re considerably wealthier, in material terms, than most of the farmers and labourers who marched under Thaksin’s banner. The electoral system in Britain is far from perfect, but by chance, last year’s election gave an outcome that was closer to the intentions of the voters than many in recent times: as ever, no one party took an overall majority of votes, and unusually, no one party was able to govern unaided. It wasn’t the result I wanted, and maybe it wasn’t what the people lugging flat-screen TVs through smashed shop windows wanted (an analysis of voting behaviour among the hooded opportunists might throw up some surprises, although I suspect not) but it’s what happened.

But just because the looters aren’t noble, selfless freedom fighters, it doesn’t mean their behaviour doesn’t warrant analysis. It was in that spirit that I tweeted:

The looting is an unholy synthesis of welfare dependency and consumer capitalism. Discuss.

...and while some appreciated the contribution, and some agreed, and some didn’t, one or two hinted that such Hegelian chin-stroking is inappropriate right now, that our responses should be practical or emotional, but not intellectual; after all, not that many bookshops were ransacked over the past few nights. It’s pretty sad when the word “understanding” becomes freighted with negative connotations; if you’re trying to understand a criminal, does it really mean that you automatically want to hug him and forgive him and buy him a Wii? Surely it’s quite consistent to want to understand and analyse an act of wrongdoing, and at the same time to sympathise with the victims and punish the wrongdoers and try to prevent the whole fiasco from happening again.

Or should we just say fuck it, and wheel out the water cannons?

PS: Hurrah! Zoe Williams brings Baudrillard to the (street) party!

PPS: And at Prospect, David Goodhart throws a slug of Fukuyama into the punchbowl...

Something to spray

Concern has been expressed at the ease with which someone was able to spray red paint over Poussin’s The Adoration of the Golden Calf in the National Gallery last week, and the event has prompted calls for security checks, protective glass and entrance fees to our great art collections. The latter argument is particularly odd, as it implies that someone with an insatiable urge to damage great art would be deterred if it cost a fiver or so to exercise his or her critical faculties.

In fact, responses to the Poussin attack became rather more measured once rumours arose that it wasn’t motivated by sheer philistinism, but by some quasi-mystical stack of conspiracy theories that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Dan Brown schlockbuster. It wasn’t just dumb vandalism, you see: it was, in a strange way, a work of art. The fact that the damage caused (minimal, as it turned out, thanks to the prompt action of the National’s resident troubleshooters) was just the same as if it had been some bored drunkard wielding the can is irrelevant, apparently.

The notion that it might be some kind of religious protest is certainly feasible; to be honest, I can’t think of an instance where an attack on a major work of art has turned out to have been conducted in the same spirit that possesses a disaffected, Adidas-clad 12-year-old inking a spunking cock and balls on the wall of an underpass. Such assaults usually turn out to be prompted either by genuine madness, or the desire to make some sort of political point (the suffragette who slashed the Rokeby Venus; the attack on Marcus Harvey’s Myra Hindley portrait). And then of course there are defacements sanctioned by the art world itself, such as the Chapman brothers’ hijacking of Goya etchings; or Duchamp’s doodle on the Mona Lisa. The danger invariably comes from someone pissing within the tent. The outsiders don’t care enough about Poussin’s work even to ruin it.

If there were any chance that some priceless work in the National’s collection were to fall victim to the nihilistic whims of a trackie-bottomed ned, it wouldn’t be entrance fees that dissuaded him; it would be the fact that it was in the National.

Nothing new under The Sun (on Sunday)

Thou shalt knit kill

An attractive young woman is murdered: the investigation into her death exposes deep corruption among the local power elites, and pushes those tasked with finding her killer into emotional meltdown. I’m talking, of course, about Forbrydelsen, aka The Killing, the Danish TV noir that’s made Fair Isle jumpers almost cool.

But it’s also the basic plot of Twin Peaks: for Nanna Birk Larsen in the boot of a car, read Laura Palmer in a plastic sheet; for Sarah Lund’s obsession for justice, there’s Dale Cooper’s descent into doughnut-fuelled madness. The two shows also share a structure in which each episode represents one day in the investigation. And the inevitable US remake of The Killing transfers the action from Copenhagen to Washington state, the setting for Lynch’s deranged masterpiece.

Talking of remakes, remember State of Play? A journalist played by John Simm (or, if you prefer, Russell Crowe) finds his loyalties torn when Sonia, the researcher/lover of his politician friend David Morrissey (or Ben Affleck), dies in mysterious circumstances, with all fingers pointing to a ruthless conspiracy of government and business interests.

 
State of Play in turn was clearly influenced by the 80s drama Edge of Darkness, in which a policeman, Craven, played by Bob Peck (Mel Gibson in the unnecessary remake) seeks the killer of his activist daughter; the money/power nexus in this case having modish nuclear overtones, which combine with Craven’s own grief and obsession, and ultimately destroy him. The writer’s original intention, to have Craven demonstrate his eco-credentials by turning into a tree, was thwarted in the broadcast version, but is it too fanciful to see this as a precursor to Lynch’s Log Lady?

And, for the real geeks, how about the first season of Steven Bochco’s Murder One, in which the death of 15-year-old party girl Jessica Costello draws unwelcome attention to the activities of too-smooth plutocrat Richard Cross (Stanley Tucci) and ultimately wrecks the marriage of attorney Ted Hoffman (Daniel Benzali)? Like Twin Peaks, Murder One was ultimately stymied by the network’s convinction that viewers didn’t have the intelligence and/or attention span to follow such a complex plot; in common with The Killing, later episodes begin with a plot recap that actually confuses more than it explains.

Several other things unite the five shows. One is the definite sense of place in each one: the rainy, dark glumness of Copenhagen; the lonely claustrophobia of Twin Peaks; London’s grimy bustle; the Yorkshire Moors and their brutal beauty; the nasty gloss of Los Angeles. Partly because of this, the identity of the killer isn’t ultimately the most important thing in any of the stories. Like the inhabitants of David Simon’s Baltimore, or Thomas Hardy’s Wessex, the victims and killers and investigators and avengers are essentially the playthings of their environment.

And in each of the five narratives, the victim is barely a character in her own right: each woman exists simply to be killed, like a virgin bred for sacrifice. Only Emma Craven (Joanne Whalley), in Edge of Darkness, has a chance to register her own identity before she is gunned down. And yet each one reaches out beyond the grave: Nanna, Sonia and Jessica have each been captured on video, offering significant evidence to those seeking to solve their murders; Emma reappears in ghostly form, like an incestuous Cathy to her father’s brooding Heathcliff; and Laura Palmer reappears in the guise of her doppelganger cousin, Maddy Ferguson. (Apparently, Lynch cast Sheryl Lee as Laura simply because she made a good-looking corpse, but then created the character of Maddy when it turned out she could act as well.)

So, if it’s all been done before, what’s so groundbreaking about The Killing? Must be that jumper after all.

This is not a crime

Some rapscallions have swiped Magritte’s Olympia from the museum based in the artist’s former home in a Brussels suburb. Painted in the 1940s, it’s not one of his better known works; I touched on this relatively undocumented period a few months ago.

In fact, because of its obscurity, most media outlets have had trouble tracking down an image of the half-inched canvas. The Times showed some initiative and came up with this:

Which of course puts one in mind of one of Magritte’s more totemic works, the one that provides my blogging avatar. Is that Olympia? Is it a postcard of Olympia? Is it a photograph of a postcard of Olympia? Or even a digital, on-screen representation of a photograph of a postcard of Olympia?

I’d like to think the robbers were suitably attired, in high collars and bowler hats.

Yes we McCann

Some years ago, I remember seeing an artist's representation of all those too-fast-to-live rock stars, and how they’d look if they’d made it into their 50s and 60s. I was particularly taken by Jimi Hendrix who, had he lived to take part the Miles Davis collaboration that still captures the imagination of people who like noodly jazz-funk-rock fusion with occasional loud bits, would now look like Lester Freamon from The Wire. Apparently.

Of course, these reconstructions can have a practical benefit, especially when it comes to working out what missing children might look like. If Madeleine McCann is still alive she will now be six years old, and her parents have released an image depicting what she might look like. Of course, what they’re really doing is acknowledging that, what with the credit crunch and Jade Goody and swine flu and Susan Boyle and everything, even the mid-market tabloids had completely forgotten about her, so they needed a useful gimmick to get her back on our radar, if not to the days when her fate was so central to our very existence.

In the absence of anything approaching solid evidence, I guess they’ll be commissioning similar images every couple of years, and the media will feel duty bound to publish them. They know what sells.

So, in 12 years’ time, will we be able to enjoy reconstructions of what Madeleine McCann might look like, pissed and bleary, snapped from the gutter, as she stumbles out of a nightclub with her knickers on display?

Slice of life

On Sunday afternoon, the head of a foreigner was found in a plastic bag suspended from the Rama VIII bridge in Bangkok. What is assumed to be the rest of the unfortunate gentleman was retrieved from the river yesterday.

Pol Col Pornsak Surasit... said it was uncertain whether the man was murdered or if he committed suicide.

Pol Col Chawalit Prasopsin, deputy commander of Metropolitan Police Division 7, said specialists at Siriraj Hospital would need time to examine the head thoroughly to determine whether it was severed with a sharp object.

PS: Actually, it looks as if they could be onto something, unlikely as it may seem... But the bag?

PPS: It’s still not entirely clear what happened but it really does appear to have been a suicide. “Maybe Mr Tasadori had no place to go and felt guilty.” A very sad tale.